The Bretton Wood agreement was created in 1947 to prevent that nations use their currencies to obtain an unfair advantage.
This was the main cause of World War I en II. The countries were obliged to adopt a monetary policy that maintained the exchange rates of its currency within a fixed value.
President Nixon broke up the Bretton Woods international monetary system on Aug. 15, 1971. The US was unable to keep its finances stable because of the costs of the Vietnam War. Nixon destroyed the Foundation of the World Financial System, the Dollar.
In 1992 the exchange rates of the member states of the EU were fixed. The Euro, a new financial foundation, was born. At this moment the Dollar is not the foundation currency of the world anymore. This position is taken over by the Euro. The EU (and other countries) are paying a high price for the Economic Policy of the US. They are paying the bills of the biggest Debtor in the World.
Many US Citizens are moving into a state of panic. Not only Real Estate and Banks are in big troube. Other highly respected industrial companies like General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are close to a bankruptcy. The Entertainment Business is also on its retreat.
The Big Casino’s are losing their customers and companies like Walt Disney, CBS and Time Warner are getting in trouble. The situation of US Big Companies is so bad that Warrren Buffett, the most succesfull investor in the World, is moving his investments to Europe. He is mainly interested in family-owned companies in Germany.
The FED is unable to lower the Interest Rates. The effective interest is already negative. When they higher the rates the economy will drop into a spectacular recession. Their only hope is a Little Help from their Friends but the amount of Friends of the US is decreasing.
Finally the Climate Issue is proving itself in many ways. The Amount of Natural Disasters (Flooding, Hurricanes) is increasing. The only thing that is still not happening is a major Big Bang Earthquake.
The US Regulators (FED) are trying to stop the Recession by Lowering the Interest Rates. The FED is helping the Banking Industry to recover from the Credit Crunch but it is not helping the rest of the economy at all. The EU Regulators are trying to stop Inflation. They are doing exactly the opposite the US is doing.
Lower interest rates push down the value of the dollar. This prompts the oil-producing countries to push for higher oil prices.
The rising prices of oil and other commodities are also a result of a Rising of the economy in India, China, Russia and other countries. A small part of the World is Going Down and a big part of the world is Going Up. The total effect of this process is a growing demand and a growing demand simply increases the prices.
The growing demand has a huge effect on the World Climate. The rising economies are polluting the environment and the decreasing economies (especially the US) have polluted Earth for a long time already. The Underdeveloped Countries are just doing what the West was doing all the time. The huge change of the World Climate will eventually hit all the economies of the World.
The World is caught in a State of Catch22. Every course of action that is chosen ends in the long term in a Global Disaster.
In reality the World is changing on many levels. We are trying to stop this change. We are unable to do this because we are unable to find a Global Win-Win-situation. To find a Global Win-Win-situation we have to Change Something on Every Level All over the World.
The Western World is not accustomed to a Way Down. It believes Everything will go UP all the time. A Recession is a temporary state down between to rising states.
The Eastern World has a completely different World View. They believe the World is governed by Cycles. We have to accept the process of UP and Down because it is the Will of God. The Eastern world believes in Destiny. Eastern people are not afraid to die. Western people fear death.
In the Western World a Human is the Centre of the Universe. In the Eastern World the Human is a Part of a Whole. The Whole is much more important than the Individual. Western Democracy is trying to Unite Individuals. In the Eastern Culture it is much easier to Move the Masses.
The population in the Western World is decreasing. The population in the rest of the World is increasing. The Culture of the Eastern World will simply take over the World just by the numbers. They are the Majority and their Majority will grow. If the World would be an immense democracy The West would be without any power. The Democratic Party of the East would win every Election.
The only way for the West to stay in power is to use military technology. The US is already doing this and it is not helping us and the US at all. The fight againgst Terrorism is seen as a fight against the people of the Underdeveloped Countries. When you are hungry you do everything to get food. When your family is killed you fight back and kill the enemy. For many people in the World it is very clear that the West is the real Enemy.
If we look at the Strategy of the Financial Regulators we can see that the US Financial Regulators are Nice to the Banks and the EU Financial Regulators are Retaliating. The US Regulators are hoping the actors (mainly the Banks) in the US will start to cooperate. The EU Regulators are defecting the same Actors. Both of them are very Clear about what they want to accomplish. Both of them want to keep on moving UP.
This is for many reasons an impossible option. To keep the World in balance the West has to Go Down. His has to go Down in a controlled Action or it has to Go Down in a Forced Action. The West will be Forced by the East or it wil be Forced by Nature itself.
The Citizins of the West have be Informed about this Situation. They have to be Informed by Politicans, Writers, The Press and they have to Educate themselves. For many reasons Everybody is Hiding the News because in the West we only want to hear the Good News.
The Banks are controlling US Government and the FED is afraid to retaliate. They are afraid that the complete US Banking system will collapse.The situation is so bad that officials of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have informed the FED about a plan that would have been unheard-of in the past: a general examination of the US financial system.
The IMF’s board of directors has ruled that a so-called Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) is to be carried out in the United States. It is nothing less than an X-ray of the entire US financial system. As part of the assessment, the Fed, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the major investment banks, mortgage banks and hedge funds will be asked to hand over confidential documents to the IMF team.
They will be required to answer the questions they are asked during interviews. Their databases will be subjected to so-called stress tests – worst-case scenarios designed to simulate the broader effects of failures of other major financial institutions or a continuing decline of the dollar.
The IMF is charged with the supervision of the international monetary system. Roughly two-thirds of IMF members – but never the United States – have already endured this painful procedure. For seven years, US President George W. Bush refused to allow the IMF to conduct its assessment. Even now, he has only given the IMF board his consent under one important condition. The review can begin in Bush’s last year in office, but it may not be completed until he has left the White House.
A Win-Win-situation is a state of a game called the Prisoners Dilemma. Life can be seen as a long chain of Prisoners Dilemma’s called an Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma. The Iterated Prisonners Dilemma can be won when one of the prisoners is not aimed at long term cooperation. In this case he has to cheat the other prisonner and kill him to avoid revenge. If the prisonners need each other in the future another scenario is neccesary. This scenario is called Tit-for-Tat.
Robert Axelrod (The Evolution of Cooperation (1985)) created a computer program called, “Tit-for-Tat“. The program always wins an Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma by simply copying the behavior of the others.
Tit-for-Tat uses the following strategies:
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Be Nice. Start by cooperating, and never be the first to defect.
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Be Retaliatory. If the other player defects inflict a cost on him or her which is at least as severe – otherwise you open yourself to exploitation.
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Be Forgiving. If your opponent mends his ways after defecting, restore cooperation as quickly as possible, so that you can both get back to scoring highly on each round.
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Be Clear. Since there is no way to beat the Nice, Retaliatory and Forgiving strategy, if your opponent knows you are following it, there is no incentive for him or her to seek advantage – it will only destroy his or her score as well as yours.
Michael Liebreich applied the Tit-for-Tat strategy on the Climate Issue. He shows that we are able to solve the Climate issue when the players change their strategy. His advice is that the US needs to start being Nice, Europe needs to learn to Retaliate, and the developing world needs to Forgive. All players need to improve the Clarity with which they communicate their strategies.
At this moment the US Government is Nice to the Financial System that is braking down. It is not Nice to the rest of the World when the World Climate is at stake. The EU is still Nice to the US although the EU is paying for the braking of the US Financial System. The Developing Countries have to Forgive the US but it is very difficult to forgive somebody who is defecting the Game all the time. When you play Tit-for-Tat you have to retaliate in this stage.
When you define a Clear strategy you have to be Realistic. The world is on many levels highly unbalanced. Everybody knows that an unbalanced state will always move to a balanced state in due time. The West has to accept that the East is trying to move to the same State as the West. The West also has to accept that this is simply impossible. The Earth is incapable to provide the necessary Energy and Food. A Realistic Strategy is to Lower the West so the East is capable to Move Up.
In the West Politicians need Votes to stay in Power. To keep the majority of the Voters happy they have to Move UP the Economy. Almost nobody of the current leaders has the courage to tell the voters that the West is at the end of its cycle and has to move Down. We are taken by Destiny. The effect of the current Policy is a continuation of the Status Quo.
To move out of the Status Quo Politicians are looking for extreme certainty when they decide to change their policies. They need the backup of Scientists to show the voters that what they are Doing is the Right Thing to Do.
Science is unable to provide this certainty. The complexity of the Economic and the Ecological System of the Earth is so big that nobody is able to comprehend what is really happening and what will be the effect of a decision on the long term.
Prof. Mort Webster writes that climate policy decisions are normally made as sequential decisions over time under uncertainty – given the magnitude of uncertainty in both economic and scientific processes, the decades-to-centuries time scale of the phenomenon, and the ability to reduce uncertainty and revise decisions along the way.
Although staging climate change policy decisions over time would seem to make sense, he points out that the tendency of U.S. and international policy to change extremely slowly requires front-loading the painful decisions. Everybody knows we are moving in the wrong direction but nobody knows in detail what we have to do.
Webster shows that the best thing to do is to Prepare and Act for the Worst and change the policy for the Better in a later state. We have to take the bitter pill fast.
LINKS
About the US Policy and Bretton Woods
About the effects of Bretton Woods
